


Unprepared for the future

by Berenos



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Explicit Language, Gen, Not Beta Read, POV Original Female Character, Post-Apocalypse, Suicidal Thoughts, Survival, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-23 16:04:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14937497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berenos/pseuds/Berenos
Summary: What if the Institute hadn't killed every single person inside Vault 111 but the "backup"? How would 13 people used to pre-war commodities adjust to the wasteland? This time there's no Sole Survivor, just a father searching for his son and twelve more cryostasis survivors along for the ride.





	1. Introduction

                The rancid stench of two hundred years old fermented waste was doing her empty stomach no favors, but at least her attempts to breath it in as little as possible prevented Alice from hyperventilating. Shots could be heard faintly even down the sewers, but the young woman had more pressing, potentially more dangerous and maybe even angry matters at hand, if the low, baritone growling was any indication. The Civic System had been the closest refuge she had seen after the first shots rang in the air, but she hadn’t expected for it to be already claimed, or by _what_.

“Shh… shh… I-I mean you no harm, I’m so sorry I interrupted your lunch. Dinner? T-that was very rude of me.”

Across from her, on the other side of the room, was an impossibly large, horned reptile, watching her intently with unblinking yellow eyes that almost glowed in the dark. Its hulking form was crouched over what it had been feeding before Alice had run blindly inside its den like a fool but, so far, her instinct of lowering herself to the ground and press her back to the wall to make herself look as insignificant as possible seemed to have saved her joining the gory remains that made up its meal.

In hindsight, it made sense, given the size of the insects roaming around, that their predators would also be larger – what was that, some kind of evolved lizard? Whatever it was, the unknown beast quieted down after she uttered her desperate, hopeful words, even cocked its horned head to the side in a curious, bird-like fashion, but the growling resumed with renewed vigor when more gunshots echoed from above, quick bursts accompanied by muted stomping and shouts. The part of Alice’s brain not occupied with the potential predator worried about Nate, but he was an experienced soldier, a war hero. He _would_ survive whatever came his way.

Her fate, on the other hand, wasn’t so certain. “Shh… It’s okay. They cannot find us down here, we just need to keep quiet. You just stay over there and I stay over here, alright? We only need to wait it out, then I’ll go away and won’t bother you anymore.” She reassured with a soft voice, so at odds with her shaking frame and thundering heart.

Alice didn’t know how long they were like that, with the beast growling and her murmuring nonsense to placate it, but eventually the fight aboveground quieted down, which unfortunately meant the giant reptile could focus the entirety of its terrifying attention on her.

The animal rose to its full height, bigger than she had initially estimated in the poor light, and it was then that Alice knew she was done for. She watched it approach in horrified fascination until its warm, fetid breath fanned her face, and she offered no resistance, just turned her head away and closed her eyes to waiting for the killing blow. Guilt gnawed at her insides because it was almost a relief, not having to face the terrible future they had been thrust into.

_‘I’m so sorry brother… You’ll have to find Shaun without me.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last edited: 23/2/19


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still unbetaed, but I read it again and again to correct typos.

                 Moments before the world ended, Alice had been still wearing her Jangles the Space Monkey™ pajamas, reading the latest Tessla issue at the kitchen counter while taking absent-minded sips of coffee, trying to ignore the aches another night of sleeping on the air mattress had brought.

She must have been left alone with the family’s Mr. Handy at some point, but she had been so engrossed with the magazine that she had remained oblivious to everything until that fateful ‘Oh, my’ from the robotic butler. Sirens began to sound the alarm just after the anchorman confirmed at least two nuclear detonations in American soil and the signal was lost, then Nora was dragging her away, Codsworth waving goodbye with its little pincer-hand and Nate hot on their heels with an upset Shaun in his arms. The infant had done his best to make his displeasure known with high pitched cries over the sirens’ wails, people’s shouts and the roar of the XVB02 flying around; the sounds echoed inside Alice’s head, bouncing and mixing until they became an undistinguishable mess.

The boom of the nuclear explosion was what took her out of her haze, just in time to agonize over the elevator’s speed going down along with everyone else, unable to tear her gaze from the mushroom cloud forming to the southwest. For a few tense moments it looked like they wouldn’t make it, but the platform lowered enough for the walls to stand between them and the blast just in time.

After that came the dark, thick and silent but for the elevator’s engines and her nephew’s hiccups, when everyone was too stunned to speak. Once the descent finished, Vault-Tec personnel was there to greet them with plastic smiles and rehearsed words, ‘Vault one-eleven! A better future, underground!’. Everything felt so surreal it gave Alice the chills, although that might have been her lack of proper clothing.

The old dog breeder from down the street was the first to react. “So we just…?”

“Yes, up the stairs.” Up the man went, and it was like his question opened the dam containing everyone else’s, but security kept directing them to the stairs and the overseer kept evading questions with a quick ‘we’ll go over it during orientation’, not even once showing a bit of compassion or understanding through the polite, professional façade.

A blonde couple got out of the elevator next – the Whitmore? Whitaker? –, with the man hurrying over to a corner to dry-heave while his missus stayed nearby, pale, wide-eyed and looking as lost as the pajama-clad woman felt. Nora still had to let go of her hand, but the clammy heat was an anchor to reality when Alice’s mind threatened to fold into itself again.

They were given a jumpsuit each and told to follow a doctor, who directed them down a narrow hallway where Alice spied a room full of weird capsule-like contraptions and pressurized gas tanks through the windows, its door sealed and being guarded by a security officer. She felt curious about it, but she didn’t dare to ask, even if she couldn’t help but feel like something was amiss, and the notion intensified when they were told to put on the suit before entering the ‘decontamination pods’, the same contraptions that had been on the off-limits room. Alice didn’t understand. What sort of sloppy engineer had placed the decontamination chambers so far away from the entrance? Anything worth decontaminating would spread along the way, rendering the decontamination process useless, and no one was wearing any sort of protective gear associated with contaminating agents; they wore just the same garish jumpsuits they were given, with an additional white coat for the doctors and body armor for the security personnel. No hazmat suits, no masks, not even _gloves_.

Still, Alice just focused on changing into the suit as fast as possible to get everything done with. The last thing the brunette saw before the machine activated was her own reflection on the glass, with haunted hazel eyes full of unanswered questions and short brown hair in complete disarray.

 

* * *

 

                Vault 111’s former residents stood on top of the elevator platform, huddling close together like motherless chicks, still shaking from a leftover cold and squinting at the world in disbelief. Everything looked barren, the flora transformed into bare, blackened trunks, sparse patches of greyish fibers and dry-looking undergrowth. The ‘neighborhood of the future’ below the hill looked like a storm had wrecked it multiple times, with a handful of houses collapsed and a couple more looking like they might join them any minute, the military vehicles that had appeared minutes before the bombs still blocking the street. The most jarring thing, however, was how utterly quiet everything was. No craft hovered in the skies, no engines roared off in the distance… Alice thought there were no critters chittering around either, until a raven landed to their right, startling them so bad that the two men in possession of a gun shot at it –they missed, and the bird flew away with harried caws.

As if the incident had woken him up, Nate broke away from the huddle, studying intently the hill below for a few moments before steely blue eyes skimmed over the other twelve survivors. “Everyone set?” At the few hesitant nods, he turned fully to face them, expression severe.

“Remember, we don’t know what the current situation is. We will return to Sanctuary to see if there are people around, but I want you to run away at the first sign of hostiles. Able,” the grey-haired man locked eyes with Nate, expression serious. “you will be in charge if I am not there.” The black-haired man then directed a stern look to the group as a whole. “I want you to keep each other safe if we come under attack. I don’t expect you to act like soldiers, but I expect you to do everything you can to stay alive until help arrives. Are we clear?” He took point after a row of solemn nods, 10mm pistol held at the ready, while Mr. Able stuck to the rear of the group, the other 10mm firmly clasped in his hands.

“Let’s go.”

The group gave wide berth to the skeletons littering the area, the bone picked clean and wearing rags more than clothes, if they wore anything at all. Their state made Alice wonder how long they’d been left there, unburied, and not for the last time the brunette wished Vault-Tec’s terminals had held more information or, even better, were connected to the world wide web.

Apparently, Vault 111 had been built with the intent of studying the long-term effects of cryostasis on humans, but the systems had automatically spat out its frozen subjects due to a critical failure, and the thirteen men and women had woken up in a ghostly compound occupied only by a few human remains and frighteningly huge cockroaches. From what she had gathered from a few entries, the vault’s personnel, fed up with a lack of outside news and dwindling supplies, had mutinied against the overseer and escaped outside, not even one year after Massachusetts had been nuked. That meant that the skeletons in the vault hadn’t been victims of Shaun’s kidnappers – which, in turn, meant the infant could still be alive. And yet… the absence of suit-clad corpses topside sparked more questions. Had the mutineers been rescued, or had they succumbed to radiation poisoning somewhere else? Had Vault-Tec still been monitoring their stasis? Perhaps they had been the ones to kidnap her nephew, to gather data of their experiment firsthand.

She shuddered at the last thought.

The descent down the hill was slow, with more than one guilty glance towards their neighbors’ remains laying just outside the gate. When they finally approached Sanctuary Hills proper, it was with a sense of trepidation that deflated when nobody rushed out of the ruins to greet them, but Nate didn’t relax even a little as he looked at each of the houses standing before his gaze settled on their own.

“Our house seems to be in the best condition. We will search the neighborhood for supplies and regroup there, we can-“ He shut up mid-sentence the moment they heard a familiar _fwoosh_ , and all heads turned as one to watch a Mr. Handy float out of the aforementioned house, quickly busying itself by tending to a rectangular ensemble in the front as if they were the most delicate of flowers. Hope swelled within Alice’s chest at the sight of what could only be _their_ Mr. Handy, and she pushed her way out of the huddle of people to run towards the robot.

“Codsworth!”

Her momentum faltered when she finally registered the state the robot was in: the outer dome was more rust than not, one of the three optics sported a worrying spiderweb of cracks, and its saw was in such a bad shape she wondered if it could even spin anymore. Three eye stalks turned to her, and the one with the broken glass kept narrowing and widening, as if it had trouble focusing.

“As I live and breathe… it’s… it’s REALLY you!” Her worry skyrocketed at the machine’s choice of words.

“Codsworth, what happened…” _to you?_ “to the world?”

It seemed surprised, as if she were asking something obvious. “The world, Miss Alice? Well, besides our geraniums still being the envy of Sanctuary Hills, I’m afraid things have been dreadfully dull around here… Things will be so much more exciting with all of you returning from the vault! Oh, welcome home, sir! Are mum and young Shaun coming back soon?”

Alice gave a trembling breath and gave her brother a panicked look because, but the man paid no mind to it, even if he placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Codsworth, I need you to focus for a moment. Did… anyone come by recently?”

The Mr. Handy returned to tending the ‘geraniums’, the very picture of nonchalance.

“Why, no, it’s just me and Ms. Rosa’s boy, wearing his Halloween costume more than a week early! I swear, the gall of that woman, leaving her brat unsupervised. Nothing like our dear Nora. Oh, where is mum, by the by?”

The repeated question was like pouring salt to an open wound. The hand on her shoulder tensed, and Alice exchanged a pained glance with Nate; he had lost his wife, and she had lost a close friend. Her closest, really. When she hesitated to answer, her brother took the reins of the conversation.

“Some people… came into the vault and killed her when she wouldn’t hand over Shaun.”

The Mr. Handy stilled completely, and for a moment Alice thought the robot would shut down, but then it swiveled in place to face them, optics looking them up and down before setting on their faces.

“Oh, sir, these things you’re saying… these terrible things. Why, they must be hunger-induced paranoia! Not eating properly for two hundred years will do that, I’m afraid.”

Two hundred years. They couldn’t have been frozen underground for _two hundred years_.

“Two hundred years…?”

Her brother sounded so uncharacteristically bewildered, a nervous giggle managed to escape Alice’s throat before she could keep it in. The group behind them broke into hurried murmurs, but they hushed quickly when the robot kept speaking.

“A bit over two hundred and ten, actually, give or take a little for the Earth’s rotation and some minor dings to the ole’ chronometer. That means you are two centuries late for diner, ha-ha! Perhaps I can whip all of you a snack? You must be famished.”

Something was off with the suddenly ancient Mr. Handy, as its mood kept swinging from being perfectly aware of the circumstances to acting like they were returning from a trip to the park. She wasn’t the only one to notice so, and when her brother pressed robot broke down.

“I… I… Oh, it’s just been horrible, Master Nate! Two centuries with no one to talk to, no one to serve!” The robot proceeded to unload the woes of being unable to perform its duties, from the struggles with nuclear fallout to the impossibility of waxing a rusted car, then visiting Concord in search of company and being chased away with violence.

“Codsworth, stay with us buddy. What do you know?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know anything, sir. The bombs came, and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought for certain you and your family were… dead. I’ve been here ever since, waiting for the day the Vault would unseal and your descendants came out.”

At their backs, someone made a harrumphing noise. “Are you done wasting time with that thing?” From the corner of her eye Alice saw it was Di Pietro – a bald, well-toned man she only knew of because Nora used to vent about him all the time before she went on maternity leave, something about missing documents and written complaints that got nowhere.

But none of that was important, not anymore.

“Have you see anything dangerous around?”

One of Codsworth’s tentacles made a dismissing motion. “Ah, just the usual, sir. Pesky street dogs and mosquitoes.”

Her brother nodded, and he seemed about to dish orders around when Alice recalled what the Mr. Handy had said moments before. “Wait, what about uh… Mrs. Rosa’s son?”

The mere mention of them made the robot angry, and Alice wondered what the real boy or his future impersonator had done to warrant such a reaction. “Oh, he comes and goes as he pleases, why, I’ve even seen him sneaking out after curfew! He went to Concord bright and early on some errand.”

“Alright.” Nate turned to address the group of people. “Spread in groups of three, see if there’s anything of use around. Codsworth and I are going to Concord, see if _Mr. Rosa_ knows anything about the people who broke into the Vault, or anything else.”

Alice was about to protest, but one dark look from her brother kept her quiet. In contrast, the robot seemed completely elated by the arrangements, even performed a salute with its pincer. “Lead the way, sir!”

With the both of them gone, the brunette somehow became part of the Able search group. While Mrs. Able was a usually joyful, pleasant woman – and still sported perfectly coifed ebony curls, somehow –, Mr. Able had always given Alice weird wives, with his deceptively sharp wit and penchant of always being _everywhere_ but, even so, she was glad to be with them; the young woman knew she was awkward enough with people she saw every day after ‘moving in’ to her brother’s home without adding two complete strangers to the mix. In deference to Nate, they left the Howard’s residence alone and went to investigate the Rosa’s while the other three groups spread about the ruins of Sanctuary.

As was expected with blown windows and roof full of holes, the interior of the house was in a poor state, with debris and miscellaneous trash scattered about, but it turned out that someone had been indeed living there: there was a sleeping bag tucked behind an overturned sofa, along with used candles, empty tin cans arranged neatly on top of each other, a beaten-up radio and even a metal box labelled “cap stash” in crude, capital letters, with soda caps stored inside. They left the stranger’s things alone, but anything else that could prove useful they put aside, from dirty coffee mugs to various tools and even some clothes they found still in their drawers; Alice felt bad for rummaging through someone else’s belongings, but… they needed anything they could get their hands on, and it wasn’t like their original owners would return from the dead to reclaim them, right?

Once they were done checking Rosa’s house, they moved down the road to check what was left of the Able’s, just besides the path that led to the vault, where a couple of big, fat cockroaches gave them a scare, but Mr. Able dealt with them swiftly, without wasting a single bullet – surprising, amazing, and suspicious. The grey-haired man poked and prodded at one with a foot, turning it on its belly with a considering look before he kicked the bug aside, pointedly ignoring Alice’s bewildered stare. She knew the man was retired, but not from what, and she wasn’t sure it’d be wise to inquire about it, so she made the pragmatic decision of shrugging it off and began to rummage about the rubble. A few seconds later, the other two joined, and the young woman let out a tiny, relieved sigh.

Mr. Able acted too much like a civilian to be a soldier of any sort, which left a single career path left for him to use a gun so well and yet be able to blend in with the population – and showing interest about it could only end bad for her. Idly, she wondered if his missus knew, if she too would be so handy in combat.

She didn’t feel so glad to be in their company anymore.

A commotion down the street took their attention from the task. “You have no right to be in my home!” It was the dog breeder, red with fury and glaring daggers at Di Pietro, who gestured to the house at his back wildly in reply. “What home? Everything’s ruined!”

A couple of strangers peeked from the doorway, watching the scene warily. Even though they had been introduced briefly before exiting the vault, Alice couldn’t remember who they were; she only remembered the last name had been something Irish because it had been strange, with the both of them being Afro-American.

“Now listen here, I didn’t work myself ragged for forty years just so you ruffians could traipse through my property when you please!” The elderly man shouted as he pointed accusingly at the other, but Mr. Di Pietro slapped the hand away, angry. “So what, you wanna go, old geezer, that it?”

Before things could escalate further, Mr. Able stepped between the two, hands held up in a placating gesture, the very picture of harmlessness, and the contrast of it with their earlier situation made Alice shudder. “Everyone let’s calm down. I’m sure they didn’t mean any harm, Pete, be reasonable. We are on our own until Nathan comes back, anything we can salvage could prove vital.”

Mr. Able shot Di Pietro a withering stare. “I’m sure we can leave a man to search through his own house, yes? It’s not like there are many of us left, there should be plenty of room to salvage without disrespecting anyone.” The burly man sneered but stepped back all the same, retreating with the dark-skinned strangers up the street. Mrs. Able approached old Mr. Pete with a kind smile to guide him gently towards the ruins of his home, followed closely by her husband, leaving Alice all alone on the road.

A glance around confirmed she was indeed by herself, and she didn’t waste the opportunity. Crouching down, she darted to the bridge, taking careful steps in the part that was falling down. At the other side Alice was greeted by the sight of a body laying in its own blood – but not her brother, much to her relief. It was a thin, scroungy man, wearing a bizarre leather get-up. His throat was gnawed open and, few feet away, a hairless, sick-looking animal lay dead, with a metallic bar protruding from a side.

It was a sobering sight, and she hoped it wasn’t something that happened often – or that the creature didn’t have any friends nearby. She felt bad for leaving the man just like that, but she _needed_ to make sure her brother was alright.

Alice broke into a jog towards Concord with worry tying her stomach into knots, never once thinking about retrieving the tire iron to arm herself.

 

* * *

 

                That was how Alice came to be in her current situation, holding her breath and waiting for the horned beast to make its move as it sniffed her from head to crotch – there was a moment where she almost acted on the unfortunate knee-jerk reaction to kick it away, but she managed to refrain the impulse. Still, the tension coupled with the fact that she was shaking like a leaf made her entire body hurt.

An agonizing eternity passed like that, with muscles aching and lungs burning, and yet… _she was still alive_. The suit-clad woman stared dumbly at the reptile as it retreated backwards without taking its shiny eyes off of her. She thought that maybe it’d pounce at her, or perhaps charge horns-first and maul her to a pulp, but it only returned to its food, picking something that could have been a haunch with deft claws and resuming its dinner. Witnessing first-hand how those maws tore away sinew and muscle in large chunks to be swallowed whole reminded her of that time Nate took her to the Franklyn Park and held her up to see the crocodiles.

Steadfastly ignored the traitorous voice in her head suggesting it may be just playing with its prey, Alice settled in for a long wait. Hopefully it’d find her boring soon, or go to sleep, and she’d be able to sneak out still in one piece.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! This is a little project still in progress I began recently so my writting skills wouldn't rust when I hit a roadblock with my other work. It is unbetaed and updates will be random, but hopefully the Wastes will be kinder to my brain than Thedas.


End file.
